{"id":485379,"date":"2010-03-29T13:03:25","date_gmt":"2010-03-29T17:03:25","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c60fd53ef0133ec4f1201970b"},"modified":"2010-03-29T13:03:25","modified_gmt":"2010-03-29T17:03:25","slug":"new-democratic-team-quinn-and-simon-meet-the-public","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/485379","title":{"rendered":"New Democratic team, Quinn and Simon, meet the public"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Posted by Monique Garcia<\/em> at 12:04 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Sheila Simon greeted commuters today at a Chicago train station, a campaign tradition that in this case comes nearly two months after the primary election.<\/p>\n<p>Gov. Pat Quinn greeted people alongside Simon, his personal choice for running mate after primary winner Scott Lee Cohen dropped out following damaging revelations about his personal life. Democratic Party officials ratified Simon as the party&#8217;s nominee on Saturday.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>Simon, daughter of the late U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, acknowledged she has her \u201cfoot in the door\u201d because of her family\u2019s political legacy in Illinois but said she still needs \u201clots of introduction\u201d before voters head to the polls in November. <br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br><\/p>\n<p>Part of that introduction includes today\u2019s six-city tour, which started in Chicago and is scheduled to end this evening in Carbondale, where Simon is a law teacher at Southern Illinois University. <br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>\u201cI am looking forward to meeting people across the state to focus on all of our families and what we want to do in terms of making this government serve the people of Illinois better,\u201d Simon said, adding she sees her role as supporting Quinn\u2019s agenda. <br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>Joined by her husband and two daughters, Simon noted that one of her strengths is that she is a mother and will be able to connect with women voters.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>She has already adopted one of Quinn\u2019s regular talking points, referring to Republican governor candidate Bill Brady as \u201cextreme&quot; and outside of the &quot;mainstream.&quot; At the same time, she brushed aside the idea that her views may be too liberal for many voters in southern and central Illinois. <br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>\u201cI don\u2019t believe that government is the enemy, and I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything wrong with that,\u201d Simon said. \u201cI come from a tradition of understanding that government can serve the people, and I think that folks in southern and central Illinois understand that and are looking forward to an open dialog.\u201d<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>If elected, Simon said she plans to continue to live in Carbondale rather than move to Springfield. She noted her father lived in downstate Troy while he served as lieutenant governor. <br \/><\/br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Posted by Monique Garcia at 12:04 p.m. Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Sheila Simon greeted commuters today at a Chicago train station, a campaign tradition that in this case comes nearly two months after the primary election. Gov. Pat Quinn greeted people alongside Simon, his personal choice for running mate after primary winner Scott Lee Cohen [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-485379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}